Dear Impossible Girl,

We've solved your existence. More or less. Now I'm half-certain that I must go and rewatch the past half-season. How am I supposed to divine the emotional thread of these things if I don't line them up end to end to analyze? This whole one-every-week thing is a nice way to watch TV, but nice apparently doesn't do it for me. I must be immersed.

And yes, I'm also the kind of person who, when I get a good novel,  will stay up all night to finish it.

My thoughts on season seven part two (without divulging spoilers):

We had an over arching question -- how is the Impossible Girl possible? -- which we answered in the final episode of the season. Not to say that there aren't going to be more impossible attributes to her existence, but we did learn her origin. But we really didn't chip away at that question except in the very final episode. Personally, I was hoping for more hints, I was hoping to chip away the way we did when we got to see Rose Tyler calling out to the Doctor in her failed attempts to punch through dimensions, then her discussion with Donna, eventually heralding her actually punching through dimensions.

The end of season seven poses loads of new questions, all of which make me very excited for season eight. Of course the existence of Clara as posed by the season seven Christmas special made me very excited and well ... it sort of panned out. The final two episodes were great. The stuff in the middle of the season? ... I guess every season needs filler. Like that episode with Rose and the 10th Doctor about the support group that got assimilated into the alien's body fat. Yeah, could have done without that one too.

When people raved about Neil Gaiman's "The Doctor's Wife" a few seasons ago I raised an eyebrow -- but Mr. Gaiman has redeemed and outdone himself with "Nightmare in Silver." Not only has he upgraded Cybermen back into the realm of scary but he gives as a brilliant statement from the Cyber Planner: (to paraphrase) you may have erased yourself from history, Doctor, but there's much to be learned from the shape of the hole you've made. 

Now that's cool.

We finally get sense made of the stupid leaf. The leaf was cool when it was in her book. It was stupid when it was fed to a giant planet-ish vampire. Now, come the end of the season, we understand the leaf's importance ... but it was still stupid in episode two. A bit like Rose Tyler using Bad Wolf to keep herself from burning up in the second episode then sitting on it until the finale when she realizes what it means. Although in this case I guess she was always supposed to have known what it meant, we just weren't really privy to an understanding of that information? Maybe? I feel like I'm reaching here.

Two other interesting revelations which I'm still teasing out -- and since these do have spoilers, I'm putting a cut, which you'll have to click on to read more ... unless you came to this page via direct link, in which case: ahoy! spoilers ahead!

Ad of the Week

Battle of the two Spocks.

Battling the Blank Page

A blank page is daunting. It's a fact. It's a totally illogical fact, but it's a fact.

Sometimes the vast possibilities presented by that which is unwritten can stymie a writer. Sometimes the idea of modifying a pristine white field (whether paper or word processor) with your inadequate first draft is demoralizing. Yet it's completely illogical: possibilities thwarted by the presence of possibilities? An empty sheet of wood pulp seeming more worthy than words representing your unbridled imagination? It's totally illogical -- and yet totally true.

So true, in fact, that I've been given advice my entire life of how to combat it:

In undergrad my creative writing adviser suggested we all draft in pencil because it would feel less permanent than pen therefore allowing us the ability to put mistakes on the page without fear of ruination.

A middle school English teacher forbade our class from writing in pencil because we were too tempted to erase our good ideas along with our bad -- pen only! Mistakes were to be crossed out, but kept. And when we got our writing back from her we saw why: she nurtured all those aborted thoughts of ours and helped us see that we could stretch beyond the safe answers we thought where the "right" answers.

I've known people who type only with their eyes closed. Or who write at night, turn off their desk lamp and pitch the background color of their word processor black so that they can lose awareness of the screen's harsh, mechanical glare. (This does provide sort of an ethereal state, especially if you alter the text color to something whimsical.)

For as many people who swear by ornate "writer helping" software like scrivner, I've heard from just as many who just want a basic word processor -- cut, paste, spellcheck -- because the additional bells and whistles of "writing helping" software can provide as much distraction as assistance.

Lately, even the word processor has become too fancy for me.

Getting the Ghost

I'm editing a second Specter Spectacular anthology for World Weaver Press. Submissions are open now through June 15, 2013 (details). The first anthology was subtitled 13 Ghostly Tales and this time it's 13 Deathly Tales, allowing us to still include some awesome ghost stories but also expand beyond the spirit trope.

The inbox is seeing a lot of moment-of-death stories, and I encourage writers to look beyond that to the ... beyond. I've been pretty vocal about looking for some great stories of psychopomps (literally meaning "guide of the souls" but I also love the "death midwife" description), and I still want to see more such submissions. I'm also encouraging relevant connections to current society whether that's funny grim reapers glued to their cell phones, displaced Valkyries, parallels between a callus Charon ferrying souls across the river Styx with unscrupulous coyotes shepherding people across the border, or modern folklore retwistings.

Ad of the Week

I fell in love with this narrative. It flew by me on TV, and I've had great fun pausing and playing it back to capture the nuances that are all there. So much more than a minute's narrative tucked into the details.

The Artistic Line Between 'Vulnerable' and 'Self-Destructive'

I've been watching The Voice this season. I tweet my live reactions @EileenWiedbrauk BTW, if you're interested in following those joys, disappointments, and uneducated immediate reactions as I have zero knowledge of the music business beyond that of avid radio station listener.

Here's the big question I've recently been pondering: why was Amy Winehouse such a huge success in such a short life? She had a fascinating voice and a hot body, yes. But so do so many of the young people who try to make it in the music business each year. So do so many of those who make it as contestants but don't win national shows such as The Voice.

Now I admittedly don't know much about the music business. But if I'm to believe what all of The Voice coaches repeatedly say, it's all about finding an emotional connection to the lyrics/song, and finding a way to connect that emotion to the audience that isn't show-tune-emoting. As the coaches say, it's about being vulnerable.

A Whovian Problem: Old men, young men, and decorative vegetables.

We've entered into a season seven (part two) Doctor Who problem which either qualifies as meta sci-fi, or the show and its production have been sucked into the Twilight Zone without its knowledge. Which is, in fact, a meta plot. So I guess that first sentence isn't so much a statement of this or that but more of a this or this non-option.

First problem: In the first few episodes of season 7.2, Clara, the current companion, comes across as more Doctor-ish than the Doctor himself. As if she's the timelord. Or as if she's draining him of his Doctor-ish mojo and his portrayal is becoming that of ... the companion.*

I told you it was very meta.

Clara is bright, witty, spunky. She delivers quick intelligent banter. And while her statements don't necessarily possess all the knowledge of centuries spent traveling the universe in an impossible time machine, she is always intelligent. Sometimes more intelligent than the Doctor. Clara also got to save the day in her first off-earth adventure ("Rings of Akhenaten") in a way that most of the other companions had to earn -- with the possible exception of Amy Pond in "The Beast Below"; although that was more of a save-the-day by gut instinct and the quick, last minute push of a button, whereas Clara had this whole drawn out speech proceeding her high-concept saving-of-the-day. All the other companions had to work up to that sort of Doctorish-understanding of how to save the universe, which makes Clara ... ahead of the game?

Unlike some past companions, Clara doesn't ask dumb questions or jump to mundane conclusions. Where Rose, Donna, and even uber-educated uppermiddleclass Dr. Martha Jones blundered into things in a very modern earth-centric human way, Clara ... doesn't.

Will this become an important aspect of her Impossible Girl conundrum? I sure as hell hope so because otherwise it's just dragging down my viewing experience. Clara's the Doctor, and the Doctor is ... old.

The character of the Doctor in season seven part two, is becoming an old man. But he's a thousand years-old, of course he's an old man! But he was so sprightly and spry when he was a mere 900 years-old, and now he's acting like when we first met him back when he was still traveling with his granddaughter Susan!

Don't think too hard on the problem of the older character now seeming older like he did when he was much much younger -- I tried and all I ended up doing was giving myself ice-cream-style brain freeze. But consider this:

The first few actors to portray Doctor Who played the character as if he were an old man. A weird old man, yes.  But it wasn't until a few actors later that the Doctor gained a youthful energy.

Let me explain. No there is too much. Let me sum up.**

Grimm, Once Upon a Time & Story Structure

I'm blogging as part of World Weaver Press's Fairy Tale Festival today about the throughlines / story structure of the first seasons of GRIMM and ONCE UPON A TIME. Catch the whole article here.

Ad of the Week

A beautiful clockwork world -- reason to revive the old ad of the week feature.

Thoughts on Snow White and the Huntsman or How Peter Jackson's LOTRs has spoiled me for all other films

I was really excited for this rendition of Snow White. I really was. And boy, was I disappointed. And it might be Peter Jackson's fault.

No, Peter Jackson didn't work on Snow White and the Huntsman. More's the pity. But because of Peter Jackson, I now expect films of high fantasy to be visually gorgeous and knit together with great sense. Yes, LOTR was written by Tolkien, not Jackson and his creative crew. But the script was rewritten by Jackson and his creative crew. They cut and reorganized. They said hey, it makes no sense for the climax of the first story arc to be in second story. So they change it. And so on.

Snow White and the Hunstman did have some cool visual effects. Like when ... whenever Charlize Theron had a scene.

The first problem with this film is casting Charlize Theron as a character whose main crisis is that her rival is more beautiful than she is. Who -- who? -- in Hollywood do you possibly cast to play that part? Kristen Stewart, who was cast to play that part, isn't an ugly girl, but she, like most American women, can't outshine Charlize Theron, even with movie magic. Not by anyone's standard. Remedy? Flash back to the now-dead old Queen telling young Snow White that she's beautiful on the inside. Ooooh. Inner beauty. Got it. Doesn't make much sense given the whole mirror trope, but we'll role with it.

The second problem is how we connect to the main characters. The Queen was creepy. Great. Goosebumps: Check. The huntsman was rugged but troubled. Deadly, with a devastating past. We can totally empathize with him. (It wasn't until I went to write this post that I realized he was played by Chris Hemsworth -- you know, Thor.) Snow White? It was impossible to care about her or root for her success.

I should preface all my following statements with the fact that this was the first movie I'd ever seen Kristen Stewart in. I'd not watched Twilight at the time and I have no personal feelings about her assorted romantic dealings which headline the tabloids. But damn, did her performance ruin this film.

Every time she was on screen she made me remember that I was watching a movie. I couldn't ever get into it because I spent all my time wondering why the hell is she doing that?

Anyone else see the pilot of Defiance and think, 'Hey, Syfy just repurposed Eureka'?

Consider this: A new guy traveling with his angry teenage daughter arrives in town after losing his car. He strikes up a friendly relationship with the current sheriff based on one's admiration of the other. The town bosslady, however, is not so keen on him staying in town. Bosslady is hot and the new guy obviously has a thing for her, but he's not going to act on it because he's getting out of dodge as soon as his vehicle situation is remedied. But as it turns out, he has the sort of street smarts that make him useful in solving the town's problems -- and manage to alienate him in the eyes of the male tycoon. He solves the town's crisis (well, one of the town's crises), then leaves with his daughter only to return without her before the end of the episode. Don't worry, she'll be back. And by the end of the pilot, the new guy has been installed as town law man after an unfortunate incident rendered the former sheriff incapacitated.

Mmmhmm. It's true: The Eureka pilot episode is the Defiance pilot episode.

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